2007 oasis sdd tc meeting minutes€¦ · web view- #11 exclusive lists (sas/jason) - #13...

Minutes for OASIS SDD TC 08/02/2007 Meeting

AGENDA11:05 AM ET Roll Call

1. Minutes approval Meeting Minutes from July 26 meeting

2. Administrative (Julia/Brent) - Next F2F meeting (Walldorf, Germany. Ballot open for selecting date) - FAQs for our TC public page -- DONE- New specification co-editor needed

3. Proposals and discussion on open CL2 (and any CL1 maintenance/fixes) work items (see separate document "CL2 Issues") -- as many as are available and time permits

Slated for this week: - Localization proposal (Julia)- Other proposals available?- Examples and issues from SAP (continued)

Future: - #9 Correlation of Requirements with Requisites (Julia) [started last week; revised proposal next week -- TBD] - #10 Conditional Requirements (Julia) - #1..#4 Topology topics (SAS/Jason) - #7..#8 Operations topics (need owner) - #11 Exclusive lists (SAS/Jason) - #13 Monolithic artifact proposal (Macrovision) [revisions from previous discussion/proposal]

------- For reference: Completed items: - #5 Conditional features (Randy) - #6 Dependencies on a different operation (Randy) - Install and operations (CL1 maintenance) (Julia)

4. Old/new business

** 12:00 noon ET -- Adjourn

MINUTESWe have a quorum.

1. Minutes for 7/26/2007 are approved without comment or objection.

2. Administrativea. Please vote for F2F dates.b. Brent has completed and posted our new public FAQs. Thank you

Brent!

c. We need a co-editor. SAP, SAS and IBM are checking into availability of technical writing help.

3. Proposalsa. CL2 Localization Proposal

Proposal slides have been posted by Julia under Working Documents on the TC documents page.This is a four-part proposal. Part 1 – expression of base and selectable languages globally and per feature – is accepted by vote. Part 2 – selecting localization units by reference to improve performance – is tabled for further discussion including bringing forward an alternate proposal for improving performance. Part 3 – moving localization content into ContentListGroup – is accepted by vote with the stipulation that the specification note that localization units which localize both base and selectable content should be put in the base content tree. It is also noted at the last minute that without adoption of Part 2 the semantics of selecting localization units that are in selectable content is unclear. Part 3 needs to be revisited after discussion of part 2. Part 4 – addition of Completion element; addition of “languagePack” enumeration value to package types – is accepted by vote.CL1 impacts: Adoption of part 1 results in a potential syntax-only CL1 change. Adoption of part 4 results in a potential minor semantic impact. See the last slide of the proposal for details.

4. New/Old Businessa. Next week: Begin topology proposal discussion; continue

discussion of localization part 2.




2. Administrative (Julia/Brent) - Next F2F meeting (confirm Walldorf location? Ballot for selecting date?)- FAQs for our TC public page -- please send any additional comments; hope to post these soon- Welcome new member, Quenio dos Santos, Macrovision - Recognition/thanks to departing member, Rich Aquino, Macrovision- New specification co-editor needed


Slated for this week: - Examples and issues from SAP

Future: - #9 Correlation of Requirements with Requisites (Julia) [started last week; revised proposal next week -- TBD]- #10 Conditional Requirements (Julia) - #1..#4 Topology topics (SAS/Jason) - #7..#8 Operations topics (need owner) - #11 Exclusive lists (SAS/Jason) - #13 Monolithic artifact proposal (Macrovision) [revisions from previous discussion/proposal]

------- For reference: Completed items: - #5 Conditional features (Randy) - #6 Dependencies on a different operation (Randy) - Install and operations (CL1 maintenance) (Julia)

4. Old/new business

** 12:00 noon ET -- Adjourn


1. Minutes from July 19, 2007 are approved with the stipulation that the minutes be amended to note that the CL1 proposal accepted last week was accepted without the CL2 content proposing new package types.

2. Administrative items

a. Welcome to Quenio from Macrovision – Quenio has worked with install software for a long time. He leads the development team for InstallAnywhere. He is familiar with the SDD work. He has been involved in the implementation of Macrovision’s SDD generation software.

b. Goodbye to Rich from Macrovision - Thanks to Rich for his many contributions!

c. Robert from Macrovision will continue as a TC member but will not continue as the specification co-editor. Thanks to Robert for many, many hours of specification editing.

d. WE NEED A NEW CO-EDITOR!!! Robert has been doing basic copy-editing, picture generation, text formatting. Work has varied from 2 – 8 hours a week based on where we were in the spec cycle.

e. F2F – Our previous decision was to hold the next F2F in Germany – hosted by SAP. That decision is confirmed without comment. Chris needs lead time to plan for the conference so we need to hold the ballot for picking the F2F dates right away. Motion to open the ballot; seconded; no opposition; Brent will open the ballot.

f. The updated CL1 Committee Draft has been posted. Revision 45 has changes tracked. Revision 46 has no tracked changes.

g. Brent has created new FAQs for our public TC page and posted them on our TC Documents page. Please review and send him comments so that this can go live on our public page.

3. SAP has posted examples and a document of questions raised by this work. (“SAP Workshop Examples” posted in the Examples category on the TC documents page.) The questions #2 and #6 from their questions doc have been addressed by proposals from Randy – posted in the Working Documents category.

a. #2 – Need to be able to specify multiple ranges within the Integer parameter. Randy proposes the addition of a Bounds element that can be included multiple times. Motion to approve; seconded; accepted without objection.

b. This change affects CL1. Julia raises the question of what that means on a practical level. Does this imply the need to change the CL1 schema that is posted or the CL1 Committee Draft? Not for this change. We propose and adopt a litmus test for deciding if CL1 needs to be updated right away: Does the change require a semantic change? If so, make the update.

c. Action (Julia) post current CL1 schema under Reference Documents. Randy will be continuing to update the CL1 schema.zip in working documents.

d. SAP question #6 – Need to be able to define case-sensitive strings. Proposal is to add a case attribute with values “upper, lower or mixed”. Debra asks if the intent of the attribute is to cause failure or conversion if the string does not match. Answer: failure. The software on top of SDD can always choose to do conversion. Motion to accept; seconded; accepted.

e. SAP question #5 – Conditions on variables … Randy will do a proposal but he will not be here next week.

f. SAP question #18 – Distributed systems … This is the one other question in SAP’s list that we are sure is an issue. The other questions probably all have answers based in the current

schema. More work is being done between SAP and Randy to be sure of that.



0. Elect temporary chair (Brent out on vacation)


2. Administrative (Julia) - Welcome new member, Quenio dos Santos, Macrovision


Slated for this week: - Install and operations (CL1 maintenance) (Julia) - #9 Correlation of Requirements with Requisites (Julia)

Future: - #10 Conditional Requirements (Julia) - #1..#4 Topology topics (SAS/Jason) - #7..#8 Operations topics (need owner) - #11 Exclusive lists (SAS/Jason) - #12 Conditions with dependencies/Conditions mirror Requirements (brought up by Randy)

------- For reference: Completed items: - #5 Conditional features (Randy) - #6 Dependencies on a different operation (Randy)

4. Old/new business

MINUTESWe have a quorum - barely.

1. Minutes for July 12, 2007 are approved without objection. Randy comments…

2. Administrative – Quenio cannot be here. We’ll delay our welcome until next week.

3. Proposalsa. CL1 wrap-up. The proposal was posted by Julia with the title:

“CL1 Proposal: Split InstallArtifact”. Noted: The SDD examples will all need to change because of the operation attribute changing to required. Proposal voted on and accepted with the revision that the proposed CL2 packageType enumeration additions (repair, verification, undo) will be deferred until we can discuss with Brent present.

b. CL2 proposal #9: The proposal was posted by Julia with the title: “CL2 Proposal #9”. This is a first draft proposal to generate discussion and uncover issues. (It succeeded.) The proposal will be revised based on issues identified in today’s discussion:

i. Requisite mapping may need to include association with the setting of particular arguments or features during requisite deployment.

ii. One requisite may satisfy multiple constraints. There could be conflicts between the arguments or features required. One requisite may satisfy contraints on different resources identified in topology. (i.e. There may need to be two instances of the software deployed by the requisite.)

iii. Requirements specified for contained packages use a different type that also needs to be associated with requisites.



1. Minutes approval Meeting Minutes from June 28 meeting (Note: no meeting July 5)

2. Administrative (Julia/Brent) - Examples status (who is providing when? SAS, SAP, IBM, Dell, Macrovision, others)?

3. Proposals and discussion on open CL2 (and any CL1 "fixes") work items (see separate document posted by Randy) -- as many as are available and time permits- Install and operations (Julia)- #5 Conditional features (Randy)- #9 Correlation of Requirements with Requisites (Julia)- #10 Conditional Requirements (Julia)- #1..#4 Topology topics (SAS/Jason)- #6..#8 Operations topics (need owner)- #11 Exclusive lists (SAS/Jason)

4. Old/new business


1. Minutes for 6/28/2007 are approved without objection or comment.2. SAP will plan to send CL2 examples next week. IBM is working on a CL2

example. Dell has created an example. SAS too. Sounds like most teams are working on reports before posting.

3. Proposalsa. Conditional Features – Randy posted a proposal in Working

Documents. The proposal calls for the addition of an optional Condition element in Feature – of ConditionType. The proposal is accepted without objection.

b. Dependency on different operations – propsal is posted in Working Documents. The proposal calls for the addition of an attribute that allows a dependency to be on a particular operation for another content unit. Observation: this proposal probably provides an important step towards solving the cascading operation issue that is on our CL2 list. (We still need an owner for that one.) Proposal is accepted without objection.

c. A new idea from Randy that we discussed: Requirements today allow expression of constraints on resources or dependencies on other content elements. Conditions today allows constraints on resources but not dependencies on content elements. Should conditions have dependencies? Our discussion favors this. We will add it to the proposal list.



1. Minutes approval Meeting Minutes from June 21 meeting

2. Administrative (Julia/Brent) - Welcome new member, Quenio dos Santos, Macrovision- Meeting next week? (US holiday; will we have sufficient participation?)

3. CL1 Committee Draft vote results (13 of 14 voters voted; all voted yes; this passes with "full majority" vote

4. Various technical items: - Need to put together the list of CL2 issues to attack (Julia is compiling a list). - Discuss items ready for discussion/proposals as time permits. Note: items below carried over from previous discussions; there are others, too)- CL2 "advanced topology" work item (Follow-up from F2F meeting; Need examples to drive this; Discussions/Q&A to enable example development to lead to a proposal (need volunteer(s) to produce example(s)) - Moving localization out of selectable content and into compositeUnit (new item raised by Julia). Similar "directional" discussion as above - any others?

5. Old/new business

** 12:00 noon ET -- adjourn


1. Minutes for 6/21/2007 are approved without comment or objection.

2. Administrativea. Quenio dos Santos, from Macrovision will be replacing Rich

Aquino. We expect him to begin attending next week.b. We vote to cancel next week’s meeting without objection.

3. Thanks to all for the work we did to reach the CL1 Committee Draft milestone.

4. Technical itemsa. Randy has posted a CL2 issues document and a issues on CL1

requirements document for our discussion today.b. CL1 Issues – 1st chart – restart enumerations

current values are too vague; cannot distinguish between restarts that need to happen immediately and restarts that need to happen before the deployed software can be used. Proposal is to replace “restartRequired” with two, more granular definitions. One person speaks in favor. Randy asks for help with naming. Julia suggests “immediateRestartRequired” instead of “restartRequiredtoContinue” and “restartRequiedToUse”. Robert wants the values to be “parallel” so we push the naming to an offline discussion between Julia and Robert. Proposal is moved and seconded and passed without objection.

c. CL1 Issues – 2nd chart – operation and state in RequirementSemantics depend on combining operation and state and are confusing. Also, state has much less meaning in SDD than it did in IUDD v1 when it was introduced.SAS speaks strongly in favor of these changes – makes things simpler and more understandable.Debra notes that changing uninstall to refer to just one operation (formerly known as delete) rather than two operations (delete and undo) begs the question of changing install which now refers to create and update. We note that there are more issues with changing install that require additional changes to be proposed. Proposals for these changes are being worked on but aren’t ready yet.We agree to adopt this proposal in full without objection and with the agreement that we will circle back on the install piece at our next meeting (July 12th).

5. CL2 IssuesThe doc Randy posted is a collection of notes related to 10 issues collected from examples work being done by TC members. Today’s job is to have initial discussions to 1) See which ones can be grouped together; 2) see which of these we think we want to work into proposals; 3) assign people to the proposals.Randy suggests that issues #1-#4 be combined. Jason volunteers SAS for these items. Randy will bring a proposal for #5 next week. #6-#8 can be combined. Randy would like to collect more scenario detail to dig deeper into what is really needed. Please send him any info you have related to these. #9 and #10 should remain independent. Julia and Randy will take #9 and #10. (We think #10 might turn out to be a no-op or just a specification clarification.) We’ll add a #11 for two issues related to ExclusiveSet – from SAS is the need to choose multiples within the exclusive set; - from IBM the need to make a selection mandatory. Jason will write up the new #11.We’ll aim for dealing with #5&#9 on July 12th and maybe #11. We’ll plan for #1-#4 on July 19th. (In addition to the CL1 install operation issue.)SAP had their example workshop yesterday and is preparing a list of issues that may introduce new issues. IBM is also doing examples work that may add to the list.



0. Elect a temporary chair (Brent is away at Boy Scout summer camp, mostly out of touch with the outside world)


2. Administrative (Julia)

3. ** REVIEW VOTE ON CURRENT WORKING DRAFT SPECIFICATION (IN REVIEW) AS CL1 COMMITTEE DRAFT - Ballot opened last week, closes today 5:00 p.m. US eastern time - Requires "full majority" vote - ** PLEASE VOTE IF YOU HAVEN'T!! - How do we deal with comments and issues that have been opened?- Note that many snippets need to be added. Will that require a new vote?- Discussion still needed on the semantics of the “required” attribute of BaseParameterType.

5. Initial preparatory discussion for selected open items: - CL2 "advanced topology" work item (Follow-up from F2F meeting; Need examples to drive this; Discussions/Q&A to enable example development to lead to a proposal (need volunteer(s) to produce example(s)) - Moving localization out of selectable content and into compositeUnit (new item raised by Julia). Similar "directional" discussion as above - any others?

5. Old/new business



0. Julia is elected temporary chair.1. Minutes for June 14, 2007 are approved without comment or

objection.2. Adminstrative – nothing today3. Ballot

a. All but 3 voting members have voted and all votes are Yes, so it looks like the vote passes. Ballot closes at 5pm today. (Votes can be changed up until 5.)

b. Updates based on review comments will be posted by EOD. We aren’t sure how the process is supposed to work, but we are fine with that version being the “official” one.

c. Resolution of the question about the semantics of the required attribute on base parameter type: it is used to indicate when a parameter with no default value must have a value supplied (required=true) and when processing the SDD

will work without a value for that parameter (required=false). Julia will add text to the spec draft to describe this and post in the “final” version by EOD.

d. proposal – add a required attribute on artifact Arguments; and on Substitution; proposal passes without objection; Note that value on Argument is optional – Argument name only is used to pass a switch (e.g. “/v”); required on Argument would really only apply when there is a value.

e. Randy has a solution for the ambiguity problem caused by the addition of extensions (xsd:any) in some of the schema elements. Some tools reported validation errors, so some of these needed extension points were removed. This is a problem having to do with the interaction of our use of the common name space and optional elements. The resolution is to move DisplayElementGroup and DescriptionGroup into sdd-dd out of common; remove the group reference in common and inline the elements in the type defined in common. Randy has made the changes. He will post, folks can look and comment if they want. If no comments received by EOD tomorrow, this will be considered approved. Spec will be updated to match. (Mechanical hits to spec are significant. This will not be in the “final” version posted EOD.)

4. SAP raises question about an uninstall scenario they are hitting. Uninstall requires the running of 3 artifacts. These really are associated with one installable unit. Current schema can’t handle this scenario. We agree we can deal with this in CL2. SAP will create a proposal to deal with this.

5. SAP will be dedicating 2 full days to intensive examples work next week. (Wednesday and Thursday.) Randy notes that IBM is also working on a complex example and has already identified a few issues that require discussion and proposals. Randy will take the todo to get that information written up and to SAP so they will have it. Also, SAS has been running into similar issues, so Randy will include that in the write-up.

6. Examples work status: active work at SAS, SAP and IBM. How’s it looking for being done by next Thursday? We want to push this out to the 9th of July. It is important to have a complete list of issues. Since we already have some

a. Localization7. Next week – discuss whether to meet on July 5th.




2. Administrative (Julia/Brent) ** Ballot now (as of June 14) open to vote on the current specification as the CL1 Committee Draft. Closes in one week (June 21).

3. Specification feedback -- discuss any review comments

4. Glossary update proposal with corresponding specification changes (Julia)

5. Initial preparatory discussion for selected open items:- CL2 "advanced topology" work item (Follow-up from F2F meeting; Need examples to drive this; Discussions/Q&A to enable example development to lead to a proposal (need volunteer(s) to produce example(s))- Moving localization out of selectable content and into compositeUnit (new item raised by Julia). Similar "directional" discussion as above- any others?

6. Old/new business


1. Minutes from 6/7/2007 are approved with the stipulation that the date is changed from 6/6 to 6/7.

2. Ballot – Please vote. There is a ballot tab at the top of you’re my Groups page.

3. Specification feedback – Please do review the spec and also please focus on content that was added based on the F2F proposals – especially a proposal that you did.

a. Randy has opened an issue re: the use of SUN specific information in the XML snippets. Two questions – is the TC comfortable with using vendor-specific information? There are mixed opinions. Brent will poll the OASIS staff to see if there are guidelines. Robert notes that using generic info is common. Randy notes that even if James says OK now, the lawyers might object at the last minute. Second question – is SUN OK with this? Moved and seconded to change to generic information. Vote passes without comment or object. Robert will make the changes.

b. Julia will send out note asking for target reviews from particular people based on F2F proposals.

4. Glossary proposal – a doc titled “Terminology Proposal” was just posted by Julia showing the proposed changes.

a. Resource – there is objection to the addition of the word “software” so we rework the definition a little and add a hardware example.The old definition was:

ResourceA defined element of a target, such as an operating system, a Web server, a software application, or a complex solution.

The new definition is:

ResourceA defined element of a computing environment , such as a computer system, an operating system, a Web server, a software application, or a complex solution.

b. Target – the title is changed to Target Resource. There is a long discussion of the meaing of target vs. host within the context of the SDD. John notes that in his environment what the SDD calls host is most like what he calls target. In the end we accept the definition with only a change to the title. The old definition was:

Target ResourceWhere a solution is deployed. Also; Where a deployment lifecycle operation on a resource is performed.

The new definition is:Target Resource

A resource that processes artifacts in order to perform deployment lifecycle operations on another resource. The host resource often serves as the target resource.

c. Host Resource – This is a new term. We accept the definition as proposed. The definition is:

Host ResourceA resource that provides the execution environment for another resource..

5. New topic: min and max length; One open issue in the CL1 spec is the meaning of min and max length on IntegerParameter. IntegerParameter also has upper and lower bound attributes. Strings that represent integers have length, but integers don’t have length. The original proposal only has the upper and lower bound. We discuss at some length and decide to remove min and max length from IntegerParameter. (Randy has made and posted the schema change – dated 6/14. Robert is making the change in the spec.) Next week, we want to discuss the potential need to state that a StringParameter can only contain numeric characters – or to provide a more general pattern that can restrict the value of a string.



1. Minutes approval Meeting Minutes from May 31 meeting

2. Administrative (Julia/Brent) - action item review (open action items)

3. Specification overview (Julia, Robert D.). High-level walk-through of new candidate CL1 Committee Draft spec- from Julia: There is a "required" attribute in BaseParameterType that is a mystery. - from Julia: IntegerParameter has min and max length attributes that need more definition (need SAP input)

4. Finish/affirm discussion from last week about "CL1+" -- direction was to handle in profiles.

5. Profile Primer Update -- Brent- Note: new owner for profile primer

6. Old/new business



1. Minutes from 5/31/2007 are approved with the stipulation that Macrovision be added to the list of participants in the runtime discussion and the minutes re-posted.

2. Administrative – We go through all action items. Brent has made all the updates he can to our TC public page, but is waiting for a few updates that have to be made by OASIS staff. That action item will close once those updates have been made. There are two action items related to mapping CL1 use cases to the CL1 Schema and assuring that all are covered. Brent posted a doc on this some time ago. These action items will stay open until we have time to review that document. He is confident that all use cases are covered. Roles and privileges action items are moved out until end of September since James cannot participate for a while. This is right at the end of the time that CL2 proposals can be accepted. The extended information action item is deferred until a future version of the SDD and so has been closed.

3. Spec review overview. a. Changes are tracked. There are lots, so consider changing the

view from “Final Showing Markup” to “Final” to hide the changes as you review.

b. Julia notes that some of the glossary terms in the Introduction section need updating and asks how to deal with this. Since we have voted on the glossary, we need a formal proposal and vote to make changes. Julia will come next week with that proposal.

c. Note that 3 open issues are flagged with comments. One is about the baseInstall package type. This raises several issues that will result in CL2 proposals. We are content to leave it as is in our CL1 draft. The other two issues have to do with the new parameter types. These must be resolved before the spec goes out. We will discuss these next week when the SAP guys are here.

d. Introductions to each of the individual element and type sections have been beefed up. Starting the review by reading only these intro paragraphs can be a good way to get an overview of the schema before diving into the details.

e. Motion to open an electronic vote on 6/14 and close on 6/21 is raised, seconded and approved without objection. Brent will do this.

4. Monolithic artifact proposal. Robert takes us through the proposal that Rich posted yesterday. The team seems generally happy with the approach but wants to see answers to the open questions listed on page 5 of the proposal and more context. We would like to complete this work at next week’s meeting.

5. Profile Primer – Rob Cutlip has been pulled off of this work. Jason from SAS is willing to take ownership of this work. (Thank you, Jason!) There is still the need for lots of input from TC member.

6. Old/new business. Next week: glossary update proposal from Julia; resolution of open spec issues with SAP present; beginning of topology discussion.




2. Administrative (Julia/Brent)

3. Update on "runtime group" initial discussion (Jason)

4. CL1 boundaries (continued from last week...let's try to complete it this week!) - example & proposal (Rich)

5. Profile Primer Update -- Rob

6. Old/new business



1. Minutes from May 24, 2007 are approved without comment or objection.2. Administrative – please look at your action items. There are several

overdue. If they don’t get updated, we’ll have to spend time next week reviewing action item status.

3. Update on the proposed “runtime group” – i.e. another potential TC that would look at standardizing implementation function and APIs.

a. A conference call led by SAS was held with Macrovision, SAS, SAP and IBM. WindRiver wanted to but could not attend. Jason updated them after the call. The group decided that rather than starting now to standardize APIs for runtimes, they want to implement the runtime in a new Ecliplse open source project. This is expected to kick-off in June. Can we use the OASIS TC page to let people know that this project exists? Brent says this would be appropriate. Brent will add this information to the TC public page as he does the other updates he has planned. Until the open source project is created, this will just point interested folks to Jason.

b. Randy suggests there may by synergy with the existing Cosmos project. Brent notes there is also an affinity with the implementation of the WSDM interface in Cosmos. Using the existing Cosmos project could save a lot of overhead effort and this work fits nicely with the purpose of that project.

c. Randy notes that there are other OASIS standards that standardize APIs. (Provisioning)

4. Continuation of discussion that Rich started leading last week re: support of monolithic artifacts (i.e. artifacts that have selectable content and complex structure).

a. Rich is looking at using a method for handling this similar to what was done via “shared artifacts” in IUDDs? This is an alternative to having a separate IU type for monolithic artifacts (e.g. WrapperIU).

b. Perhaps CompositeIU could be moved into a new CL 1.5 along with this shared artifact-type support. Randy notes that this is problematic because there is not a clean separation in the schema of these particular concepts. If schema elements to support them are put in a CL 1.5, there would be nothing about the schema to limit their use to less than the full CL2 function. These restrictions could be documented in the spec but would not be clear in the schema.

c. CL 1.5 – we might want to include Requisites.d. CL 1.5 – we would want to limit the aggregation so that all

aggregated artifacts go to the same target. Randy wonders if this might be better handled with profiles.

e. Can shared artifacts resolve to multiple targets? No. They might create resulting resources that are hosted my different resources, but the one monolithic artifact goes to one target resource for processing of the artifact.

f. Rich will work more on this proposal based on today’s discussion and we will discuss again next week.

g. Do we want 3 CL levels? Do we want to add more function to CL1 and just have 2 levels? Or do we want to not change the CL definitions at all. Any change is likely to impact end dates. There may be some change that is simple enough that the impact is small.

h. On the table: i. Handle simple aggregations (e.g. maintenance aggregations

– no shared artifacts; no feature selection) prior to CL2;

ii. Handle monolithic artifacts (requires some selection of content and shared artifacts) prior to CL2;

iii. handle requisites prior to CL2; iv. handle conditional aggregations – once conditions are

evaluated, resulting aggregation includes artifacts that all go to the same target.

i. We discuss the relative values of dealing with these with CLs vs. using profiles to communicate support for these varying levels of function. Those who speak lean heavily toward relying on profiles to handle these distinctions. This would suggest that we need to look at Rich’s proposal re: monolithic artifacts as additions to the CL2 schema. Then support for this could be communicated via profile. Clearly more discussion is required. Brent will alert Rob to this discussion since it affects the profile work he is doing.

5. Profile primer update: deferred. Note that Rob posted a new version of the primer last week.

6. Old/new business: Randy found two string elements in the CL1 schema that need to be translatable. They are Severity and Category in MaintenanceInfo. He would like to change their types from string to DisplayTextType. No objections are raised.


AGENDAAgenda:11:05 AM ET Roll Call


2. Administrative (Julia/Brent) - CL1 should now be closed. Next specification update is candidate for CL1 Commitee Draft

3. Specification Plan/Schedule Proposal -- Brent (20 mins)

4. Resource name issues (refer to Julia's e-mail of 05/23).

5. CL1 boundaries (continued from last week) - example (Rich) - are bundles in CL1? (Julia)

6. Profile Primer Update -- Rob

5. Old/new business



1. Minutes for May 17, 2007 are approved without comment or objection.2. Administrative items: see agenda3. Brent posted a proposed project plan.

Please review this schedule if you were not able to attend the meeting today. We talked through the schedule line by line. Points of discussion include:

The plan calls for a vote to adopt the CL1 spec as a “Committee Draft” on 6/21. (Not 6/20 as shown in the posted spec.) This does not mean the spec cannot be changed after this vote. We can approve changes later. It does not mean that it goes out for public review. It is just a way to establish a level of stability. This vote requires a majority of all current voting members, not just a majority of voting members attending the meeting on 6/21.

The plan calls for completion of examples by 6/18. SAP asks to change that date to 6/25. We will change the date, but others are encouraged to keep to the 6/18 date if possible. The point of the examples work is to identify issues. In order to complete the specification by 11/26, we really need issues identified as soon as possible. Once issues are identified, our

time will be spent creating and adopting proposals to resolve the issues. Examples can be posted anytime so don’t wait if you have something now. (Use the “Examples” category when you post the doc.)

A concern is raised about how the examples posted on the web site will be used. The TC’s purpose is to use examples as a means for identifying issues. These are not intended for publication in the specification. If there is a concern about exposing information about real software, you can create a real example internally then scrub all identifying information before posting.

We need to publish some of the dates from our plan on our TC public page. There is a motion to adopt this schedule with the two changes noted above (6/20 -> 6/21; 6/18->6/25). The motion is seconded and passes without objection.

4. The resource name issue is explained in Julia’s email sent to the TC mailing list yesterday. We vote to make the proposed changes. Note that these are clarifying changes that cause the schema and resulting XML to more directly and clearly express the intent of spec. It is not a functional change.

5. CL1 Boundaries bundles: The current specification text about the file purpose

“deploymentDescriptor” says that one or more files can have this purpose and when they do, it repesents a “bundle”. This use of the SDD seems problematic. It raises many questions. We decide (via vote) that this should be changed to say that exactly one file has this value. We note that people who want to create bundles, can do that by combining multiple package descriptors in whatever way suits their purposes. The specification will not talk about this. (Thought from the minutes-taker: This might be worth a mention in best practices – hint to Brent.)

Rich posted a zip file today, IAExample.zip, with an example and presentation describing potential approaches to dealing with the complex artifact scenario. We got started looking at his presentation. This discussion will continue next week.

We made good progess toward our newly-adopted end date of 11/26 today. Thank you team!



0. Elect temporary chair for this meeting


2. Administrative (Julia/Brent) - PackageDescriptor changes sent to Fukui-san for review with respect to OGF-ACS; he agrees with these changes- Action items updated on Web page -- please update yours!

3. Derived variable with conditions proposal -- Randy (10 mins)

4. CompletionType change proposal -- Randy (10 mins)

4. WrapperIU/CL1 constraints -- continue discussion from F2F (Rich)

5. Old/new business



0. Brent cannot attend today. Julia is elected temporary chair. (Robert and Julia will both take minutes and Julia will combine them so we get the important points.)

1. Minutes for May 10, 2007 are approved without objection.2. Administrative – see announcements in the agenda.3. Conditions proposal – Randy

Proposal doc is posted on the TC docs page. This uses the same condition structure used in Completion elements in DerivedVariables.

[Tangential question is raised that we want to follow up on: Are values of expressions case-sensitive? Should the schema declare where fields are case-sensitive? Should the dictionary? For now, we will hand this issue over to Rob to address in the dictionary work.]

Question raised: about priorities in alternatives if multiple conditions succeed: if conditions are not mutually exclusive, SDD author can use the priority attribute on ConditionalExpression.

Question raised: about AND-ing conditions: since the new Condition element is reusing requirement/constraint, alternative conditions can be defined. AND-ing is supported this way.

Jason motions to accept this proposal. Merri seconds. Proposal passes without comment or objection.

4. CompletionType proposal – Randy.

This proposal is in the same doc as the condition proposal. It adds alternatives to the conditions associated with completion actions. Condition type is reused to provide alternatives; this is a patch-up, not a major change.

Merri motions to accept the proposal. Jason seconds. Motion passes without objection or comment.

5. Problem statement: One exe installs an application and a plug-in. The exe allows the plug-in to be excluded based on user selection. In more general terms: What happens when you have an artifact that has selectable content? Current CL2 schema only allows association of features with content elements and their artifacts as a whole. There is a need to associate features with selectable content within an artifact. Wrapper IU makes the arguments to artifacts look like individual content elements and so supports association of features with portions of artifact content via the setting of arguments.

WrapperIU has some of the complexity of CL2, but not all. Should we have 3 CLs? Let CL1 remain the same; put WrapperIU, some simple aggregation and possibly more in a new CL2; let everything else go into CL3?

Do we like WrapperIU as a solution to this problem? Is there a better way to support artifacts with selectable content?

We clearly need more discussion. Rich will come up with a real-world example to guide future discussion.



1A. Minutes approval: Meeting Minutes from April 26 meeting 1B. Minutes approval: Meeting Minutes from April 30 - May 4 F2F meeting.

2. Administrative (Julia/Brent)

3. Profile/Dictionary ("Primer") update (Rob)- Rich has some information to share- Other input based on examples review from SAS/SAP?- Other related discussion

4. Old/new business



1. Minutes approvala. Minutes from the April 26, 2007 TC meeting are approved without

comment or objection.b. Minutes from the April 30 – May 4 F2F are approved without

comment or objection.2. Administrative – none3. Profile/Dictionaray update

a. See the “Profile Primer” v0.11 posted by Rob.b. Good discussion; good progress.c. We need to determine the scope of profiles. There are probably

at least 12 billion entries that could go in the dictionary. How do we scope the contents and what do we say about interoperability?

d. Who produces profiles? Some thought SDD producers. Others argued that it would be software that processes SDDs that would produce profiles. It is noted that the profile represents the “contract” between SDD producer and consumer.

e. Tangential discussion identified the potential need to add a code-page field to the SDD. Values for this field would be identified in the specification, not in the dictionary/profile. (Do we need a proposal from someone on this?)



1. Minutes approval Meeting Minutes from April 19 meeting

2. Administrative (Julia/Brent) - Action item review as necessary - Updates for next F2F meeting (April 30 2:00 - May 4 noon; hosted by SAS in Cary, NC ** Proposed agenda posted for review & comment

3. Specification review feedback and discussion

4. Old/new business



1. Minutes for 4/19/2007 TC meeting are approved without comment or objection.

2. Administrativea. SAS has all the logistics worked out. If there are any

additions or deletions from the attendee list, please let Jason know asap. Dinner reservations are made for Angus Barn –there is a charge if the number is fewer than reserved so please keep Jason up-to-date on your plans. Jason will send out a SAS campus map and instructions for getting through security. Dress code? Business casual. Meeting will be in a marketing building where customers are present.

b. Call for comments on F2F agenda? None.c. Are we in good shape for examples next week? SAS is working

on an example, making good progress, expects to be ready for F2F. John will create an example. Examples are being used as learning tools. Brent sent template for the type of information that we need with examples. Please try to create a doc based on this template in addition to the xml example. (Doc is more important than the complete xml so please don’t leave it out.)

3. Spec reviewa. SAS is compiling comments and will flag comments that

require TC discussions. These will be added to the agenda under the spec review item.

b. Discussion is raised re: the potential need to do more than just substitute values into artifact files. e.g. File content may need to be added to or deleted. If there are use cases, it could be added. For v1 let’s make sure there is an

extension point that allows someone to add additional file modification information. We need a proposal to add this extension points… just add it to the existing extension proposal.

c. Julia will post a list of discussion items arising from Christine’s comments. She will also post an updated spec draft EOD incorporating changes based on comments receied to date. (DONE as of 6PM 4/26.)

d. Discussion item: conditions on DerivedVariable. One issue: do we have to have this condition? Is there a better way to deal with the scenarios that lead to it’s inclusion? Merri will send Randy an example of how this is used. The primary use is to set the default value of install location based on the operating system type. Secondary issue: The VariableExpressionType semantics are overloaded. If condition remains, perhaps it should have its own type.

e. John will send input on profiles based on real-life examples to Rob Cutlip who is working on the profile/dictionary definition.

4. Old/New Business

Does this spec address virtualization? Answer may be yes, but it has not been discussed directly. We don’t see why it would not support virtualization. (If it really is virtual, it should be transparent. Doesn’t affect the SDD.) Maybe we can add statement somewhere about virtual container. SDD and package are virtualization-neutral. What if memory requirement is different when in a virtual environment? Answer, SDD would express requirement on accessible memory. That could be available from hardware or from virtual container. John has examples of some information (requirements) that is different for a virtual environment. He would like to have some discussion on virtualization and the creation of examples as necessary. This affects the profile/dictionary – not really SDD. So discussion would be in context of profile/dictionary work.

Information on call-in and web conference for F2F is in calendar section of the TC website.




2. Administrative (Julia/Brent) - Updates for next F2F meeting (April 30 2:00 - May 4 noon; hosted by SAS in Cary, NC) ** need attendance - Specification review in progress until April 26 -- next week's meeting will focus on review results/comments- OASIS Symposium BRIEF recap (more during F2F meeting)

3. Preparation for F2F/agenda setting A. Company input on when you need/want/expect a ratified SDD 1.0 standard B. Based on input from (3.A), determine general approach for remaining work and focus areas for F2F meeting C. Determine who will provide necessary examples for F2F D. Inventory of proposals to be presented at F2F E. Other necessary discussion to generate agenda that will make F2F successful

4. Old/new business



1. Minutes for April 12th are approved without comment or objection.2. Administrative topics

This is the 3rd week of the three week specification review period.

Clarification question on last week’s progress indication proposal: Are weights for progress indication needed in CL1? Answer: yes – CL1 can have multiple artifacts which may be used during a single deployment creating the need for weights in CL1.

3. F2F Preparation A. We need to update our schedule. We start by finding out what

team members expectations are on timing of SDD committee draft:i. Sun – notes that original date was sometime last year; no

strong expectation; desire to see something at the end of this F2F or a couple weeks later – at least CL1 closure. Expectation that there will be lag time between publishing and industry adoption.

ii. SAS – expecting CL1 and CL2 committee draft in August. Need CL2 function.

iii. SAP – want something in fairly usable state early next year. Need CL2 function.

iv. Macrovision – CL1 nice, but most customers will need CL2. Would be great to have something by September.

v. IBM – various internal drivers for date. Would like something ASAP. Perhaps can do something with CL1. Want CL1 and CL2 committee draft at least sometime this year. The sooner the better, but also want to get it right.

vi. Dell – would like it yesterday, but also want it to be right. Need CL1 and CL2 function. Also need profiles. Need by end of this year, but the sooner the better.

vii. CA – anxious to see standard done; no specific gating events but the longer it takes the more things get started without the SDD.

B. Determine general approach to completion. i. Expectations (stated above re: SDD completion) range from

late summer to early next year.ii. Can we close CL1 in F2F?iii. Suggestion: we need set “mode of operation” for F2F. i.e.

Set time limits for discussions and take vote at end of time if no consensus has been reached.

iv. Is it a reasonable goal to shift our focus to CL2 during the F2F?

v. Will we be covering profile/dictionary in F2F? vi. Suggestion: don’t discuss minor proposals; just vote and

move on; i.e. Have a “weight” attribute for topics and dedicate time based on weight. Comment: Discussing weights might take up as much time as discussing the topic. Comment: We could start by asking the question – can this function be dealt with in SDD V1 via extension points and leave the details for SDD v2? Comment: we need a time cap regardless of importance. Topics that are still being actively debated aren’t ready for the whole TC. (Implication of this statement: Interested parties should be working out proposal details on the side.)

vii. Suggestion: One time cap for clarification discussions; Different time cap for debate;

viii. Brent will take a cut at an agenda and circulate it for comment.

C. Examples: who will create them?i. Adrian and Merri from SAS are working on examples for

aggregation and configuration; Someone from SAP will start on an example next week; IBM has posted some examples with the schema.

ii. Rich from Macrovision will bring an example.iii. When creating profiles, please identify values in your

examples that would be associated with profiles/dictionary.

iv. Question: What our team members expectations about what is required to make us confident that the specification “works”. Dell – needs to address all the function in their current xml documents. John will be doing this analysis and will bring forward any gaps he discovers. He notes that the profile definitions are important.

v. Randy notes that, for the F2F, clarifying examples, i.e. fully describing the use case, before creating the xml is important. When creating examples for the F2F, please start with this. More important to come to the meeting with this description than with the completed xml.

vi. Goal of examples review in F2F is not to go through every line of the xml, but to understand use cases and identify gaps.

D. Inventory of Proposalsi. Conditional content proposal from Randyii. Debra will have to step out of the committee for about 2

months; so she will not attend the F2F and will not have the human readable information proposal. Issue: a subset of John’s proposal was deferred to the human readable discussion. Since we won’t have that, John will bring back that part of his proposal. (For extended artifact information.)

iii. James does not expect to have roles and privileges proposal. He is ok with SDD v1 going out without this.

iv. Profile proposal from Rob Cutlip. Goal is to get agreement on direction.

v. Extensibility proposal from Randy. vi. Package types proposal from Brent.

E. Other agenda discussioni. We will devote some time to spec review.ii. Spend some time on project plan. – At least a plan for a

plan.iii. Focus the bulk of F2F time to be spent on CL2.




2. Administrative (Julia/Brent)- Action item review as necessary - Updates for next F2F meeting (April 30 2:00 - May 4 noon; hosted by SAS in Cary, NC) ** need attendance- Specification review in progress until April 26- OASIS Symposium next week

3. Progress indication proposal (James/Chris) -- we began review of this last week; will continue today

4. Old/new business



Nico Groh from SAP joins us for the first time today. Nico has worked at SAP for 6 years with the last 1.5 yrs spent in the area of installation and upgrade. Nico is replacing Frank who has taken another position. This is Nico’s first time on a standards committee.

1. Minutes for 4/5/2007 are approved without objection. We noted that the date and specification review instructions have been corrected.

2. Administrative Jason needs a good estimate of attendance for the F2F meeting.

(SAS is hosting.) 3-5 from IBM, 1 on phone. 1-2 from Macrovision, 1 on phone. 3-4 from SAP. 1 on phone from Sun. We aren’t sure about CA. (Debra is not here but Brent thinks she might be attending by phone.) Probably 1 from Dell. (John is not here today to confirm.)

Specification – Note that Randy has incorporated into the spec and schema the changes suggested by Dell last week and accepted by the TC. These changes mostly affect the Package Descriptor section which is not currently under review. That version will be posted (probably early next week). Please don’t let this interrupt your review. It’s fine to keep reviewing using the current draft – revision 37.

Brent will be attending the OASIS Symposium next week3. Continue progress indication proposal:

Weights – scope of weights is within a given SDD. Weights from different SDDs are not relative to each other and cannot be compared

until both SDDs are included in an aggregation. Purpose of weights is to provide hints to runtime. Can be ignored, used or augmented by runtimes. What are heuristics for assigning weights? James says “gut feel based on empirical testing on ‘representative machines’” – but we’ll need to work on this wording for the specification.Question is raised about the inclusion of weights in aggregating SDDs is affected by changes to the aggregated SDDs. It is noted that other things besides weight need to change in the aggregating SDD when the aggregation changes. Choosing to use weights does come with the need to adjust the weights if necessary when the aggregation changes.Question is raised about how topology interacts with the weights. Since weigths are relative within a solution, if the topology changes, the weights are likely to change.Question is raised about the reason for using decimals – as opposed to integers. James says it is because that is how he usually sees weights but doesn’t have as strong preference. Randy notes it might be simpler for humans to understand integers. James notes that decimals allow negative numbers, which is not valid for weights. (Can decimal type be restricted to non-negative?) Using positive integer circumvents that problem. Also makes it somewhat easier for human readers. We agree to change it to positive integer. In absence of a weight, the weight is assumed to be the average of ??? [Note to Minutes readers: I didn’t catch this – James said it. If someone remembers, please send me a note and I’ll modify the minutes]. Should weights be used everywhere if used anywhere? Answer – possibly as a best practice.Proposal is to add weights to artifact type and referenced package type. When putting it on reference package, which operation does it apply too? Randy motions for approval of this proposal with the change from decimal to positive integer. Julia seconds. No discussion. No objections. Motion passes. It is noted that spec wording for this item needs to be provided.

Next week – F2F agenda. Week after – spec walk-through.



1. Minutes approval Meeting Minutes from March 29 meeting

2. Administrative (Julia). Also: - Updates for next F2F meeting (April 30 2:00 - May 4 noon; hosted by SAS in Cary, NC)- Action item review as necessary

3. Specification update (Julia et al)- content of latest spec for posting- review process

4. Package Descriptor updates proposal (John) -- reviewed last week; will review updates this week and vote

5. Progress indication proposal (James/Chris)

6. Old/new business


1. Minutes for March 29th are approved without comment or objection.2. Administrative – many action items are overdue. Please review these,

make plans to accomplish your items and change the due date accordingly.

3. Specification review – Revision 37 is posted in TC documents – title “SDD Specification Draft”. Please review sections 4,5,6 and 7 for technical content (only). Please post comments using the comment facility in TC documents. (In the document view, choose “Details” on the far right in the document row. There is a Add Comment button at the bottom of that page.) We will have a 3 week review period, then intensive review during the TC meeting. Please open the doc in Word in a view that displays comment bubbles in the right-hand margin. There are a few notes to reviewers that you will not see unless you do this.

4. Package Descriptor – a look at updates to the proposal based on last week’s discussion. (Minutes for last week record this discussion.) John posted the update in TC documents – title “Some suggested changes for SDD”. Changes made are - Page 3: “id” is changed to “label”. Page 5: Content type is now a single element. Page 6: addition of artifact instruction information will be deferred and discussed as part of the human-readable information proposal. Brent asks for a motion to accept the changes on page 3 and page 5. John moves, Julia seconds, vote passes without comment or objection. John notes that Debra has two proposals – human-readable content and

human-readable information. The artifact instructions fit into the second one. These are broad proposals. Debra plans to have this ready for the next F2F and will include artifact instructions as part of the recommended included information. There is a consensus that artifact instructions are needed and will be included in the human-readable information proposal.

5. Progress indication proposal – The proposal was created by James and Chris and is posted in TC documents – title “Declarative Progress in SDD Proposal”. James took us through the proposal. Discussion and comments include the following.

a. We note that the weights shown in the diagram on page 7 (i.e. the numbers next to the labels, e.g. in “C6 1.0”, 1.0 is the weight) are assigned by the aggregating element (e.g. C6 is assigned the weight 1.0 by A2 and A2 is assigned the weight 2.0 by A1).

b. We note that weights in artifacts for different operations (e.g. install, configure, uninstall) in same sdd still need to be relative since aggregators can combine operations in any way.

c. We note that weights must be relative and absolute because actual time depends on so many factors beyond the scope of the SDD – such as hardware type.

d. We begin a discussion of where to put weights for aggregated packages (e.g. possibly in reference package element). Also, the ability to aggregate by including multiple deployment descriptors in a package descriptor rather than aggregating via deployment descriptor may require weights also in the package descriptor.

e. We begin a discussion of other schema elements that may require weights. Resource discovery and requirement evaluation take time. Are these totally in the scope of the runtime or can the SDD author provide weights that are as reasonable as weights for artifacts?

f. Discussion to continue next week.



1. Minutes approval Meeting Minutes from March 22 meeting


3. Ballot results for next F2F meeting; determine location and host(s) for meeting.

4. Package Descriptor updates proposal (John)

5. Old/new business



Welcome to new members Adrian and Merri from SAS.

Adrian Dunsten works in installation technologies. One of the people looking at forward-facing processes to improve how change management is handled on customer end. He has a java background and is working an unix foundation installer. He has put together SI prototypes (SI is runtime that uses the IUDD specification (pre-curser to SDD.)

Mary Jensen has worked primarily with InstallShield technologies focusing primarily on the cross-platform installers for SAS. She also works in the Installation Technologies group and has been the Install Coordinator for the last couple of years. Along with a few others she worked quite a bit with the IBM team on the original SI proof of concept for the SAS Business Intelligence offering and has been continuing to work on the SI prototypes. She is looking forward to contributing to the SDD specification and participating in this group.

1. Minutes from 3/22/2007 are approved without objection or comment.2. Administrative: All our action items are overdue.3. F2F Ballot closed. The clear winner (9 votes) is the week of April

30-May 4. Plan on that week – mid-afternoon Monday through Friday noon. SAS will be more than happy to host this F2F at their Cary facility (Raleigh, NC area). Brent notes that it is a beautiful campus with easy access. We vote on using this facility for the F2F. The vote passes w/o objection.Jason will send the guys in Germany information on hotels, etc.

4. Package Descriptor updates proposal – John posted this proposal on the TC web site documents page.

We agree that the proposed package ID field needs to be in the schema, we disagree on the name. After much discussion we agree to name this attribute “label” rather than “id”. We agree on these things in principal. Next step is to see the actual schema change and the actual specification text. (This is step for every proposal.)Content type: John proposes the addition of <ContentInformation> that provides a category and sub-type to classify packages. These values would be enumerated. Question about whether they can be extended. Debra notes that these values really depend on the vendor. There are many possibilities for category and type. Would the profile be involved? Randy notes that CIM did this as a single value. If you want category and type in the value you can use a separator. CIM has standardized some values. Profiles could be used to express supported values. Suggestion: Add content information to the schema. Use a single value like CIM does rather than the category and type structure shown in the proposal. Call this single element <ContentType>. No objections are voiced.Artifact instructions: This is a proposal to add a field to allow inclusion of fairly extensive text into artifacts to provide instructions to humans on how to apply the artifact. We note that this is logically a subset of the human-readable proposal. (The human-readable proposal is still waiting for TC members to provide feedback on the extensive information provided at the last F2F.) Debra says she plans to have the human-readable proposal for the next F2F with or without TC member feedback. We adjourn without finishing this conversation.



1. Minutes approval Meeting Minutes from February 22, March 8 and March 15 meetings (note: March 1 meeting cancelled; did not have quorum at March 8/15 meetings).

2. Administrative (Julia). Also: - Ballot open for selecting date for next F2F meeting. Ballot open until March 27; please vote for all of the selections for which you could make it.

3. Custom entities proposal (Julia/Rich) -- this was presented previously but could not be formally voted on owing to lack of quorum.

5. Version proposal (Brent)(if time allows)

6. Old/new business - continue profile discussion? - any other items



1. Minutes for February 22, March 8 and March 15 are approved without objection.

2. Ballot still open on F2F dates. SAP mentions they cannot make it the week of the 23rd. Brent notes that the first week in May is the current leader.

3. Custom “stuff” proposal – continue discussion. Julia recaps proposal based on posted proposal presentation. Randy argues in favor of alternative 1 – removing the current custom check element and documenting these concepts in the spec rather than adding custom logic for other elements that correspond to the environment. We vote and agree to accept alternative 1 presented at the F2F rather than the current “custom stuff” proposal (alternative 2).

4. Version proposal – Brent has posted this in the Working Documents title. Debra notes that the ability to compare versions is conceptually the same as the ability to discover the values of resource properties – a function we have decided to leave entirely up to the implementation. This is an argument against stepping into the very complex arena of version comparison. We discuss and agree to just make version a string and acknowledge that implementations need to understand how to compare versions


MINUTESWe do NOT have a quorum. The unusual daylight savings time change resulted in the SAP folks in Germany calling in late. Chris, Frank H., Lazar and Thomas K. of SAP are credited with attendance.


AGENDA1. Minutes approval Meeting Minutes from February 22 meeting (note: March 1 meeting cancelled).

2. Administrative (Julia). Also:- Ballot has opened for selecting date for next F2F meeting. Ballot open for 3 weeks; please vote for all of the selections for which you could make it.

3. OASIS Symposium update from Jane Harnad, OASIS (5 min.)

4. Custom entities proposal (Julia)

5. Version proposal (Brent) (if time allows)

6. Old/new business- continue profile discussion?- any other items

MINUTESWe do NOT have a quorum. 1. Minutes from 2/22 cannot be approved without a quorum.2. Ballot for next F2F is now open. Currently pursuing either Austin (to

be co-hosted by IBM and Dell) or Raleigh (co-hosted by IBM and SAS) as the location.

3. Jane Harnad of OASIS: OASIS symposium to be held April 15-20, 2007, in San Diego, Calif. Event details available from URL on OASIS home page.

4. Custom Stuff proposal (Rich and Julia): Rich has posted a presentation in the working documents section. Some comments from a walk through the presentation:

a. All the concepts apply to current artifacts; nothing new being introduced.

b. Q: How to separate (for example) lifecycle operation artifacts from resulting resources?A: The timing, inputs, and functions are different.

c. Q: Does the presentation list all the areas affected by the proposal?A: The list on slide 3 ("SDD elements that correspond to the deployment environment") was generated from Julia's going through the entire schema; the table on slide 5 is exhaustive. The left column is the scope; the rows are grouped by function; input is the base type name.

d. "CustomStuff" is obviously not the final name. Brent suggests "CustomItems" as a stopgap to keep us from getting too comfortable with "stuff".

e. Slide 8 (CustomStuff element in schema): there's an implied maxOccurs="1" (which is explicitly displayed in the illustration on the previous slide).

f. Slide 9 ("Supporting Types"): AllElementsSupported should be removed. Also, only appropriate element types supported in each

element of type CustomArtifactType; not enforced in schema, but to be described in spec.

g. Much discussion of the semantics of having this in SDD: does it mean "must be run" or "should be run"? Suggestion that if it's optional, should be called "hints".

h. Is custom stuff an override? Only makes a difference if there are side effects; discovery, for example, should not have side effects.

i. There is concern that the same semantics cannot be used for all the types of custom stuff being discussed. To revisit.

j. Slide 13 ("Implementation Implications"): there is concern about interoperability. Does the implementation decide whether a custom artifact is performed once or multiple times if associated with multiple elements?

k. Discussion about the value of the SDD being in the information/metadata, even if it replies completely on custom artifacts/logic); implementation still needs means to make decisions; initial reference implementation can be bare-bones, focused on parsing and logic tree, rather that physical aspects of deployment.

l. Require more details of classes of custom stuff; Rich to post an example, and it is suggested to customize the JRE example with custom stuff.

m. There is a suggestion to add an attribute indicating whether implementation has a choice to override built-in with custom; in any case, should document in spec.



1. Minutes approval Meeting Minutes from February 15 meeting.

2. Administrative (Julia) Also recent OASIS changes of note, for information (Brent):- specification template changes, XML namespace conventions- TC process changes: conformance statement, 3 statements of use

3. Ballot for next F2F meeting (need a motion)

4. Old/new business- continue profile discussion?- any other items


MINUTESWe do not initially have a quorum. Quorum achieved at 11:10. (As always, attendance specifics can be seen on the TC web site in the meeting document – available from the Calendar view.)

1. Minutes for February 15, 2007 are approved without comment or objection.

2. Administrativea. Please plan to complete your action items on schedule.

b. OASIS process changes:i. There is a new OASIS specification template. Brent has

forwarded it to Robert and Julia. He does not think we should update immediately since we are in the midst of major spec updates.

ii. There are also new OASIS TC process changes. OASIS formed a TC a while back to form a standard for OASIS specifications. One of the new requirements is that there must be a statement of conformance. Brent thinks our chapter on conformance that he has been working on will probably meet that requirement. Three statements of use are also required. These are written statements from TC members stating that they have successfully used the specification. For us, this probably means that we need at least 3 different members to create an implementation. We don’t think, at this point, that this has to be a shipping product. Clarification is needed on the details of the statement of use requirement.

3. Ballots now require a formal motion. So, we need a motion so that Brent can create the ballot. Motion made and seconded and passes without objection. Brent asks John if Dell can host the next meeting in Austin. This could be co-hosted with IBM Austin. e.g. part of the time at Dell, part of the time at IBM. John says it may be possible depending on the week chosen. The other choice is a similar arrangement using the SAS and IBM Raleigh facilities. Ballot will cover the last week in April and first two weeks in May.

4. We had some follow-on discussion of profiles. Issues discussed included:

a. representation of resource relationships in the dictionary; should these be represented via hierarchy or data within a flat list? Suggestion was made that we start with a flat list to avoid problems if it turns out a hierarchy can’t accurately represent relationships. We can always change to a hierarchy after we have a better idea of the types of relationships that will be modeled in the dictionary. It is noted that there are several relationship types implied by the contents of the SDD: hosted, component; consumes; and uses.

b. granularity of dictionary data; how “low” will it go? At the OS resource level we clearly need to go to the brand level (i.e. Windows, AIX). Will we go to the brand level for other types of resources? Maybe for something like a DB engine that hosts other types of resources. Maybe not for resources that do not host others.

c. Do we need to add something to the SDD to indicate the profiles required to support the SDD? Maybe. We’ll know better once we have a better idea of what profiles are.

d. How will the central dictionary be maintained? What will the infrastructure be? Who will support it? Who will pay for it?

e. Brent notes that our plans - for a specification with conformance levels as well as profiles to help determine interoperability - are consistent with the new OASIS conformance spec.



1. Minutes approval Meeting Minutes from February 8 meeting.


3. Review of company input about dictionary/profiles


MINUTESWe have a quorum. 5. Minutes from 2/8/2007 are approved without comment or objection.6. Processing of action items based on last week’s discussion has begun.

Watch for update notifications for your action items later today.7. Discussion of the dictionary and profiles. Brent has posted a

presentation to guide the discussion. (Use the latest posted in the Documents view not the one linked to the most recent notification from Brent.) The discussion focused on clarifying the dictionary and profile concepts. I have attempted to note the highlights here.

a. An analogy: The dictionary is like a set of words to be used when creating profiles which are like sentences. In addition to the dictionary, we want to provide a set of starter/example/recommended profiles that spell out sentences that we believe are useful and make sense. Note that it will be possible to create profiles that do not make sense – like a sentence with bad grammar.

b. Obviously the dictionary will not be able to define all possible “words” in advance. When a profile creator needs a new “word”, should it be defined in the profile or defined as an extension of the dictionary? Assertion: New “words” should be extensions of the dictionary.

c. Someone suggested that a wikipedia model could be used to grow the dictionary. It was noted that version control is essential for interoperability so any wiki-based process would have to take that into account.

d. Where are relationships between “words” recorded? e.g. A hosts relationship between a database table resource and the database or a create association between a DDL artifact file and a database table. Assertion: only relationships that are always, irrevocably true should be recorded in the dictionary. Most relationships supported/understood by an implementation will be defined in the profiles.

Next steps: Brent and Randy will create a subset of a real example of the dictionary, profiles and SDDs that use the profiles. All are invited to do the same and bring their examples back to the group.



1. Minutes approval A. Acceptance of Meeting Minutes from January 25 meeting. B. Acceptance of Meeting Minutes from January 29 - Feb. 2 F2F meeting.

2. Administrative (Julia) [Note: we will have a review of selected new action items later in the agenda]

3. Specification updates (status, outlook, open items based on results of F2F meeting)

4. Review of selected new action items from F2F (objective is to plan for future calls -- proposals, profile discussion, etc.)

5. Other old/new business.



1. Minutes approvala. Minutes for January 25th are approved without objection.b. Minutes for January 29th F2F are approved without objection.

2. Outstanding pre-January F2F action items.a. Close 139 and open an action item for completing GGF alignment.b. 162 looks like it was covered by the addition of file purpose

types. Debra looks at use case 2.5.8 finds that this is really about overriding content in composed solutions. This is a CL2 issue and is still needed. Change date and add [CL2].

c. Close 173. Examples are posted in the Examples category on the TC web site document page.

d. Close 174e. 175, 176 – change due date to 2 weeks from today – put on

agenda.f. 182 – need for this will be handled by profiles. Close.g. 183 – split into CL1 and CL2 issues. Change CL1 date to next

week.h. 187, 201 – mark as CL2. Change date to middle of Marchi. 189 – change date to end of Februaryj. 190 Change after discussion next week.k. 191 – Close.l. 193 – Close.m. 197 – Close.

3. Spec updates are underway. Aggressive outlook is that a new version will be ready for TC review 2 weeks from today. We’ll checkpoint on this date next week.

4. Open proposals - a. Profiles: We need everyone (one per company) to come back with

ideas about what the dictionary and profile look like. There is a list on page 20 of the F2F meeting minutes of 10 or so aspects of profiles and dictionaries. Julia will open action items for each company to have these ideas prepared and posted in “Working Documents” for next week’s meeting.

b. Package types – change owner from Debra to Brent.c. Human readable – Debra is still looking for feedback on the

information grid she presented at the F2F. Who is planning to provide feedback? John will review. Feedback is needed in the next week and a half, and then Debra will put together a proposal for 3 weeks from today.

d. Version – Brent assigned to this. Debra suggests that this proposal wait until after the custom logic proposal.

e. Custom “Stuff” – Julia and Rich will work together on this with the goal of having a proposal 3 weeks from today.

f. Progress Indication – James and Chris will do this proposal.5. Agendas for the next 4 meetings will include the following.

Next week –profiles and dictionary Two weeks out – package types proposal; continue profile

discussion; spec ready for review. Three weeks out – Custom “stuff” proposal; human readable

proposal; Four weeks out – Version proposal;



1. Acceptance of Meeting Minutes from January 18 meeting.

2. Administrative (Julia) Also: - any last-minute updates/considerations for next week's F2F meeting? (James -- see recent e-mail)

3. Preparations for next week's F2F meeting: A. Overall agenda review -- see posted document(note Monday start 2:00 p.m.) B. Detailed agenda review -- see posted document: i. Examples -- agreement on primary reviewers ii. Proposals -- verify all will be ready; validate allotted time iii. Validate remaining/overall agenda



1. Minutes from 1/18/2007 are accepted without comment.2. Question is raised about how to bring up new discussion topics at

the F2F. First option: get the item on the agenda. Second option: bring it up during general discussion or discussion of other specific proposals or discussion items.Question was raised about Internet access – there will be a wireless internet connection. Also, there will be a phone with satellite microphones. Brent will set up a hosted web conference for sharing content.

3.a. Brent posted a Word document that contains the agenda

overview. Start time is moved to 2PM on Monday. A polished draft of a subset of the specification containing only content relevant to the package descriptor will be posted EOD Friday. Look for a document titled SDD Specification Draft – Package Descriptor Only. Please consider reviewing this on the plane as you travel to the F2F. One of the first topics will be comments on this portion of the spec. (Note that the deployment descriptor content has not been completely updated to the new format and so will not be posted. However, the technical content of the deployment descriptor section is up to date. It was updated after the last F2F and can be seen on the TC web site in the document titled SDD Specification Draft posted by Robert Dickau on 11/30/2006. This is revision 33.)

b. Brent also posted an Excel spreadsheet with the agenda details.

i. We went through the proposal list making sure those assigned to proposals can be ready.

ii. We swapped some assignments on the examples page and added a pair of update examples. Julia (was) volunteered (by Brent) to draft a start of the fix and update examples which will be filled in with additional information once the fix proposal is finalized.

iii. Homework for everyone – review examples, have proposals ready.




2. Administrative (Julia) Also: - next F2F meeting confirmed for January 29 - February 2, hosted by Sun in Orlando, Florida, US. Please make arrangements accordingly.

3. Any additional specification comments?

4. Discuss Proposal for A193 (Weijia (John) Zhang)

5. Review new Examples (Randy George)



Introducing Jason from SAS, a new TC member. He is Software Manager for Installation and Deployment

4. Minutes from 1/11/2007 are accepted without comment.5. No new news on the F2F.6. No new comments on the specification.7. John’s proposal on support for response files was discussed at length. A few

changes were discussed and agreed to. John will update the proposal. Text re: problems with AdditionalFiles on pg. 4 will be removed. There was some confusion about where the response files fit into the

overall process. These are response files that are supported or required by artifacts. They are not something the SDD author makes up. This proposal provides a way for the SDD author to associate response files with artifacts and identify parameter substitution.

New parameter elements are added within the AdditionalFileType that can specify substitution information. It was noted that the primary artifact file may also need to use substitution. John will modify the proposal so that substitution is supported in the primary artifact file as well as the additional files.

It was noted that the artifactType=”ResponseFile” statement in the example was misleading. There is already a file purpose value of ResponseFile. The artifactType attribute is intended to provide a specific response file type such as properties file.

The language on pg. 9 re: SDD values taking precedence was noted as confusing. John will change the wording.

We stopped before discussing page 11.




2. Administrative (Julia) Also:- next F2F meeting confirmed for January 29 - February 2, hosted by Sun in Orlando, Florida, US. Please make arrangements accordingly.

3. Review comments on proposed new specification introduction (Chapter 2)

4. New proposals:A. Need to ensure that outstanding proposals will be ready by the F2F meeting at the latestB. Proposal to split up review and feedback on examples for F2FC. Begin reviewing any proposals that are ready now (John, Randy may have some)

** 11:50 a.m. US Eastern time - adjourn (I am requesting that we adjourn 10 minutes early if possible and agreeable to everyone)


1. Meeting Minutes from January 4 2007 are accepted without comment.2. Reminder about the January F2F. We will meet from approximately 1PM

on Monday to noon on Friday. Brent will post a draft agenda soon. We have a lot of work to get done. All voting members are expected to attend. There will be WiFi internet access. Daily security badges will be required – which should be easily printed from a kiosk at the entrance. We look forward to another productive meeting like we had in October.

3. Specification Overview Review – Section 2 of Spec Format Proposal Example 1.doc

a. Discussion of the suggestion to remove section 2.1 problem domain – Debra: terminology is introduced in this section, so if it

is removed, we would need to have these terms introduced in the new, not yet added, terminology section containing the subset of terms that are potentially ambiguous.

Another comment (Thomas K from SAP?) – just putting this in a terminology section will lose the information on how these things relate to each other. The problem domain section clearly explains these relationships and is useful. If this is removed, maybe it could be in a primer.

Debra asks what the objection to this section is. Randy answers – it’s a good overview but lengthy and not entirely related to the spec, more a general introduction that

belongs in a separate Overview doc – assume we are publishing this separate doc. Debra: this is good information for folks who are looking at this specification out of the blue. However, if we are going to publish an Overview doc outside of the specification, then it is appropriate to move this information out of the specification. Randy is concerned that the length may hinder the review process.

Brent asks: do we want to have a separate Overview doc? Does it go through a review process? Not clear. Probably a stream-lined process. Motion: Publish a separate Overview document with problem domain information – this will purely conceptual and not contain specifics of the schema; Remove section 2.1 from the specification; Refer to Overview document in the specification overview. Seconded by Debra; Brent asks for No votes. None are voiced, the motion passes.

Clarification-all the other things we have discussed re: addition of terminology (Mini-terminology section up front, full glossary at end)and sections from James’ write up of roles still are in force. Comment made and agreed to: Overview needs to be available at the same time as the spec.

b. Brent calls for substantive comments on section 2.2 Problem Solutions: Comment - Are there any mentions of conformance levels?

Response - Should not be in the Overview section but will be explained in the specification. Add placeholder statement in Overview stating that the overview applies to all conformance levels.

Suggestion to flip the order of Topology and Content. Objection raised, but all agreed that concepts regarding the variety of content - maintenance, configuration, localization, etc. – be added to the intro before section 2.2.

Debra: no content related to the relation between the specification and implementations of the specification. Add some sentences to the spec overview about this. Also add a section to the Overview doc on this. Debra will send Julia a note with some of these ideas.

Christine: Where are we going to talk about profiles? Profiles will be a F2F topic. Profiles answer the big question about how you relate the information in the SDD to information in the environment. Existence of profiles need to be acknowledged in the spec although the profile specifications themselves will be separate documents. Top 3 questions people ask when they first hear about the SDD: What’s this for? How do you get consistency? Where’s the API? Spec overview should answer these questions. Profiles are intended to allow for consistent deployment and need to be mentioned.

c. Brent: If the editors can provide an outline for the spec overview soon, the TC can review it prior to the F2F. Also, Brent will provide examples of the other proposed front matter additions.

4. We have a lot of proposals planned for the F2F. It’s critical that proposals be ready for F2F. Debra: human readable info; James: roles; many others. Brent will put each of these in the agenda. Please review the agenda as soon as it is posted and see where you are in

the schedule. Brent received a suggestion for the F2F – ask each person to thoroughly review some subset of the example descriptors created by IBM (not yet posted)and present the results of their review at the F2F. i.e. Let the reviewer rather than the author present each example. No one volunteers. Action item: Randy: will post the CL1 examples. Different folks will be assigned an example to review for the F2F. Everyone – take a look; volunteer for one if you can. We will discuss again next week.



1. Acceptance of Meeting Minutes from December 14 meeting.

2. Administrative- action items review and other administrative (Julia)- next F2F meeting confirmed for January 29 - February 2, hosted by Sun in Orlando, Florida, US. Please make arrangements accordingly.

3. Review & Discussion: Example for proposal for specification restructuring (Julia/Robert/Brent) (25 mins)

** 11:00 a.m. US Eastern time - adjourn


1. Meeting Minutes from December 14 meeting are approved without comment. 2. Administrative

a. Team members are reminded to plan to get action items done by the new due dates.

b. There is an OASIS symposium in April in San Diego. All members can submit papers and proposal. Each TC is invited to give an update. It would be very good for us to do this. Can anyone do this? Think about it.

c. Reminder – logistics have been sent for the January F2F. Go ahead and make your plans. James is working on a hotel group rate. There are 3 or 4 hotels almost within walking distance. He’ll send options via TC email.

d. Brent is working on a draft agenda for the F2F. Please send him ideas for the agenda if you have any. We want to close out CL1 and then make progress on CL2.

e. Please be ready to discuss your proposals (see action items).f. We make most of our progress at the F2F meetings. Please plan to attend.g. Question was raised: has there been any effort to assign use cases to CL2.

No, but we’ve said that everything that is not CL1 is CL2 unless we find a strong need to split out another CL. All use cases not marked as CL1 should be considered CL2 use cases for now.

3. Spec Format Example Proposal – doc was posted today by Robert Dickaua. A new section 2 in the proposal doc includes an Overview that is a stripped

down version of IBM’s submission overview. Please review the content of this section by next week. Randy suggested that roles based diagrams and information provided by James would provide value if worked into the Overview. Add role-based section, definitions, diagram, based on James's information. Action item: Julia: Find this information and work it in.

b. Sections 4 – 4.10. We made it through these proposed content changes and agreed to the format with the changes notes below. Note that there are also proposed changes to front and back matter that we will discuss once Brent has time to draft examples.

General: 4.7.1: make xmlspy diagram format consistent across all diagrams. Are we allowed to use xmlspy diagrams? Action item: Brent:

Investigate legal use of xmlspy diagrams; Randy to provide Brent with copy of xmlspy license.

How to fit examples in? In prose, describe examples, what we want to show. Start by adding a fourth new subsection everywhere containing an

example snippet. Decide as we get to each one if it is really necessary. Don’t hesitate to leave this section out where it does not provide sufficient value.

State at the beginning that all is normative except where noted; remove (normative) notation; Brent’s examples demonstrate this?

Where the new subsections (property summary table; xsd fragment; usage notes) would end up at the same heading level as a subsection describing a child element, create another subsection used to nest the new sections. Goal is to prevent the new subsections from ending up at the same heading level as a child element.

Tables: Consensus is to use 4.1 or 4.5 table style: think about abbrs, smaller

font Remove cardinality column, element/attr column Leave in r/o column Add default value information to Description column (instead of adding

a default value column) Hyperlink to xsd fragments for all types Remove choice column, add to diagram conventions (as everything

else) Remove "source"/"ref-def" column: make sure content added to usage

notes XSD fragments:

Move XSD fragments to after table; make usage notes last Use color XSD with light gray background (same background as overall

doc)